XT660R Heaven

Life on the road is fab...

Monday, 24 March 2014

More training needed me thinks :-)

I received a text from my mate Gaz on Sunday night, 'It's a good forecast for Monday, we out to play?'
Of course the answer was a resounding 'YES' so we met up at 10.30 on a gloriously sunny day & headed out to find some new green lanes in Cumbria.
Our first foray took us to St John's in the Vale, where we took a little jaunt over the two Rigg Fells, dropping us right on the entrance to the Coach Road, this is about 5 miles of lovely rolling lane, with a bit of a rough & loose first bit uphill. The views were beautiful, snow on all the surrounding fells & an open track pretty much to ourselves... we saw a group out practising their mountain skills & a farmer on his quad looking after the sheep, a friendly wave as we passed by from all, the sunshine does wonders for the human temperament!!
From there we headed over to Little Mell Fell & then up towards Greystoke, (Yep the home of Tarzan), before heading north toward Dalton via Mungrisdale & Caldbeck...

We found some fab lanes, with only one brief negative moment that was a conversation with a lone grumpy farmer who was all puffed up for a fight it felt like, to be fair he had a good reason to be grumpy, I'd missed a turn & we ended up on a bit of his land, we were just turning back around to retrace our route & go the right way when he appeared, but even his surly attitude couldn't do damage to such a beautiful day & to so much great riding.

We stopped in Caldbeck for some fuel & a nibble on something for us, the garage here is great, the pumps are from the 70's & the Post Office is a great little place to pick up something to put some energy back into a rider!

As we neared Dalton on some good muddy tracks, Gaz managed to drop his bike as we did a bit of a u-turn in a puddle, his feet only just touch the ground on his old XT600, so any kind of slope& it's touch & go each time, most of the time his great riding skills save the day, but today gravity won & the bike was laid down on its side, cracking the left hand plastic hand guard. First blood to the green lanes!!

We picked up a lovely long lane that went for a couple of miles & came out near Dalston, near the end of it, there was plenty of good deep puddles, some of which got into the electrics on Gaz's XT, these old bikes have a much simpler electric system which can be a benefit sometimes, but in this case, water got into the connections somewhere & caused a short, which stopped the bike dead, so a quick strip down & drying session saw her start up again & off we went, but as the bike was now running pretty lumpy, losing revs every now & then we called it a day & headed back home.

Gaz later found a split in the Carb/Head rubber so we think this might be the problem, spanner time!

Great day out again & for me loads more practise for the TAT trail!! Happy days...